Mopar Plymouth Race Car Driver Ronnie Sox - Mr. Four Speed

Ronnie Sox, the quiet, blonde-haired, southern gentleman known for his mystical mastery of power-shifting a manual four-speed transmission passed away Saturday, April 22, 2006, at his home near Richmond, Virginia. Ronnie succumbed following a lengthy battle with prostate cancer. His beloved wife Diane, family, and friends were nearby when the legendary driver took his last ride.

During his long and storied drag racing career, the Burlington, North Carolina, native garnered practically every honor and championship available for the full-bodied drag race cars he loved. His wins included NHRA and IHRA World Championships, and he was nominated as AHRA Driver of the Year in 1968. In 2002, Ronnie was an inaugural inductee into the East Coast Drag Times Hall of Fame, just one of the many honors bestowed upon him during his five-decades-long racing career. in 2001, he was named Number 15 in the Top 50 Drivers poll announced by NHRA .

In 1971, Ronnie, along with other invitees Richard Petty and Bobby Unser, were honored guests at the White House, meeting President Richard Nixon. With help from a co-author, Ronnie penned a book titled: The Sox & Martin Book of Drag Racing, which was published in 1974.

Ronnie began his drag racing career as a teenager, sneaking into the local drags and racing his dad's '49 Oldsmobile Rocket 88. Seeking more speed, he soon switched to a Y-Block 312-powered '57 Ford. At the time, his family owned the Sox Sinclair Service, a combination Sinclair gas station and repair shop. the family business developed into a high-performance tuning and speed shop operation where young Ronnie gained both knowledge and customers for his rapidly expanding skills. It was out of that service station that he began running Chevy 409-powered cars and gained a reputation as a skilled driver and power tuner. His '62 409 Chevy "Bubble Top" Bel-Air sedan was a feared competitor in the Optional/Super Stock classes in the Carolinas, or wherever he chose to run his four-speed 409 Chevy.

In 1963, Ronnie partnered with another local Burlington, North Carolina, drag racer, Buddy Martin. The two had previously been competitors, but teamed up to campaign an aluminum front-end, '63 Z-11 option, 427 Impala in the new A/Factory Experimental class. Thus was born the fabled Sox & Martin racing team. Ronnie's own drag racing career would include notable accomplishments during each of the next four decades.

When General Motors boycotted all forms of racing for its divisions, Sox and Martin reluctantly signed on with rival Mercury Division. The former Chevy racers were provided with one of the new '64 Comets equipped with a dual four-barrel, 427 FE Series V-8, with a fiberglass front end, a heavy-duty Top Loader four-speed transmission, and a heavy-duty 9-inch Ford rear axle. Their car was a Comet hardtop coupe, while Mercury teammate Don Nicholson chose the Comet station wagon for its better rear weight distribution. The difference between coupe and wagon was insignificant, and they found immediate success running A/Factory Experimental class in open competition and match races against all challengers in the southeast. They were mostly unknown by the California guys, but their Mercury Division sponsors ordered its North Carolina-based S&M race team to report to Pomona, California, to race at the NHRA Winternationals.

Uncharacteristically, Ronnie was late off the line and lost the A/FX class trophy to Bill Shrewsberry, who later gained fame as a driver of the Hurst Hemi Under Glass Barracuda and other exhibition wheelstanders. Stung by the loss, he righted the ship in that Sunday's Top Stock final eliminations, cleaning house and winning the posted cash ($500), as well as a new Dodge 426 Hemi engine. In those days before huge factory funding, it was usually difficult to make ends meet, so they promptly sold the Hemi engine to help pay for their trip back home to North Carolina.

It was the beginning of a very successful year for the Sox & Martin team and Mercury, and offered what seemed like an exciting proposal for the duo's '65 racing campaign. However, a contract dispute with Mercury found S&M abandoning their short-lived association with Mercury. instead, they signed with Chrysler's Plymouth Division after they were convinced the impressive 426 Hemi engines would be theirs. The team took delivery of their '65 Plymouth Belvedere 426 Hemi four-speed sedan and launched the Plymouth Division's second most successful racing team, just behind NASCAR's Richard Petty.

The familiar red, white, and blue Sox & Martin colors adorned the '65 legal Super Stocker, but the altered wheelbase '65 Plymouth A/FX was easily the most popular with fans. Sox & Martin ran this gutted, lightweight, steel-bodied, homebuilt Funny Car in AHRA open competition events and match races at both well-known and two-lane blacktop-style backwoods local drag strips. They easily racked up an impressive win record against the best match race rivals of the day. Burning through powdered rosin and then backing up to do several more similar burn-throughs for the crowd, the S&M team wowed the usually capacity crowds, running low 9-second runs at 140-plus mph. Those wide-open throttle, power-shifted runs were often performed with the front wheels off the pavement as the legend of Mr. Four Speed grew.

The AWB '65 led to an even wilder '66 Plymouth built on the all-new Barracuda platform. Sox & Martin gutted the car, added structural strength with a tube steel rollcage, added a lightweight fiberglass front clip, altered the wheelbase by shifting the body to the rear on the chassis, and dropped in one of Jake King's powerful 426 Hemi engines. The traditional S&M paint was complemented by eight 26-inch-long ram tubes atop a Hilborn fuel injector that made the crowd's eyes water with heavy doses of nitromethane and alcohol racing fuel. Big loads of nitro and stroker crank match race engines were known to create excessive shock loading on the drivetrain parts and reliability suffered. To remedy the new Funny Car's hunger for parts, S&M reluctantly added a modified Torqueflite transmission. Although Ronnie missed the four-speed, the auto transmission's softer launches all but eliminated the Hemi's hunger for parts.

In spite of a successful match racing season, the arrival of Mercury and Ford's new Logghe tube chassis, flip-top fiberglass Funny Cars, and their 427 SOHC V-8 engines placed the S&M Barracuda at a disadvantage. Ironically, it was old rival Don Nicholson that led the charge when Don's revolutionary new Funny Car won heavily in both 1966 and 1967. Sox & Martin continued to soldier on until 1967 when Chrysler's drag racing brass called a halt to the Funny Car program.

In 1967, Ronnie found himself back at the wheel of an 11-second, four-speed, full-bodied race car, which he adapted to with immediate success. Along with the more docile Super Stocks came the immensely popular Performance Clinics. Sox & Martin carried the banner for the Plymouth Division on the East Coast, while Dick Landy was their West Coast counterpart for Dodge Division. Staged at dealerships, the clinics lured new customers into Plymouth and Dodge dealers by teaching basic as well as advanced drag racing techniques. The clinics covered engines, tuning, chassis prep and tuning, and driving tips, all from the well-traveled, well-schooled clinic stars-Sox & Martin. New car dealers loved the clinics, and reportedly sold thousands of cars as a direct result. The clinics also enhanced awareness of drag racing and increased attendance at local tracks. It was a win-win situation all around when the S&M hauler ramp truck and second race car on an open trailer parked in front of a local Plymouth dealer's showroom. Sox and Martin were the epitome of professionalism for a race team. They dressed in matching uniforms and handled questions with articulate aplomb, capturing legions of fans for Chrysler vehicles and Mopar Performance parts.

Chrysler's two divisions liked the race results and sales they were generating with their drag racing programs. Bolstered by this success, they placed their engineering focus on creating vehicles, parts, and support that would dominate drag racing. When R&D and testing efforts were complete, Chrysler contracted Hurst Corporation to build a short production run of 426 Hemi-powered '68 Dodge Darts and Plymouth Barracuda coupes. Hurst set up a line in the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak and began assembling the all-time baddest production-built vehicles ever offered to the American public. The 426 Hemi Barracudas and Darts were instant legends, claiming loads of Super Stock class and Super Stock Eliminator wins at national and regional events, as well as local tracks.

These street missiles featured the heavy-duty Dana 60 rear axle for stick-shift cars or an 831/44 axle for automatics, a heavy-duty New Process four-speed gearbox or 727 Torqueflite automatic, a thoroughly engineered cross-ram intake manifold carrying a pair of Holley four-barrel carburetors, and a gigantic hoodscoop designed to intimidate the competition, as well as ram cold air to the sealed inlets of the carbs. Factory compression ratios for the Race Hemi 426 were quoted as 14.0:1, and the cylinder heads came with sizeable intake and exhaust ports more than capable of allowing the engines to be revved at 8,000-plus rpm. It was a skillful job of total overkill, and an example of the powerful strength of a vehicle company when it chooses to create a winning racing program.

The new '68 Sox & Martin Hemi Barracuda, capably shoed by Ronnie Sox, was an immediate 10-second winner that kept getting quicker and faster as the team moved its development forward. Now the flagship team for Chrysler's drag racing program, S&M raced, did clinics, and tested hard on their rare off days. It was an all-out, total-war effort intended to dominate in any theatre. S&M clinic appearances were often scheduled for the same weekend as a major event or one of the points meets staged across the country. the team often brought diverse cars, such as their Hemi-powered Road Runner, a 440 wedge B-block-powered GTX, and a Hemi-powered Plymouth Super Bird with the NASCAR-style rear wing. Regardless of body style, any car trimmed in the Sox & Martin colors flat hauled the mail.

Not only did these cars excel in NHRA Super Stock Eliminator, they were also fast in match race trim. This phenomenon grew out of the Chrysler, Ford, and GM drivers' dislike for handicap-style racing and disqualifying break outs for going too fast. They preferred heads-up starts and basic run-whatcha-brung rules. Curiously, most of this was a throwback to the early Funny Car days and the Match Race Mania so loved by tracks and fans.

The Hemi Barracudas and Darts were right at home in these heads-up events and match races. It was this popularity that brought both NHRA and AHRA to offer Pro Stock heads-up racing, beginning with both association's '70 winter meets. Bill Jenkins, always one of S&M's toughest competitors, had a head start on the field by running numerous heads-up events and match races with a two-four carbed, Tunnel-Rammed 427 Camaro running at lighter weight. He dominated the Pro Stock events in early 1970, taking AHRA and NHRA races and the NHRA Gatornationals in March. S&M quickly caught up and dominated the rest of the season. This run-the-table sweep included a team win by Herb McCandless in the Sox & Martin Plymouth Hemi Duster at the Nationals. S&M won every remaining NHRA Pro Stock event that year.

They opened the '71 season where they left off in 1970, winning all the way to midyear in 1971, when they lost at the NHRA Summernationals in Englishtown, New Jersey. The formidable S&M team wasn't outrun at that race, but fell to an untimely flat tire just as they were moving towards the starting line during eliminations.

Those Pro Stock successes were also captured with Ronnie giving his own clinic in shifting the Chrysler Red Stripe four-speed manual gearbox. Unfortunately, the '68 Barracuda he so cherished wasn't the focus of the '70 Pro Stock program. Instead, S&M began the Pro Stock wars with a brand-new, purpose-built '70 Plymouth Hemi 'Cuda coupe and a Hemi Duster. This came about as a result of Chrysler understandably wanting to race what it was selling. That meant 'Cudas (Plymouth shortened the brand name to 'Cuda instead of Barracuda) and Dusters. No matter, S&M's domination of the bracket had all the brand-Xers howling for a rules' break. NHRA's solution meant added weight for any Hemi-powered Pro Stock race car. It seemed that whenever a Hemi car won in NHRA, the rules officials quickly added weight to the minimum for the Chrysler marques. Ultimately, this led to the NHRA's complex system of weight breaks for engines with different heads and bodies with different wheelbases. The 426 Hemi-powered cars were forced to give away more and more until they were finally no longer competitive running at the rules' mandates. By the mid-'70s, Chrysler had scaled back their drag racing programs to avoid the Pro Stock weight break dilemma and what all Chrysler racers and fans thought of as a vendetta against their beloved 426 Hemi engines.

Ronnie Sox and Buddy Martin eventually dissolved their long-standing partnership, but Ronnie continued to field a familiar red, white, and blue, Hemi-powered Pro Stocker. First, it was a Dodge Colt, and, later, a Plymouth Omni. He even drove Dean Thompson's Ford Mustang to an '81 IHRA Pro Stock championship with power provided by Jack Roush.

Sox and Martin briefly teamed up again in 1995, running an IHRA Ford Probe with an 815-inch, Jon Kaase-built, 429 shotgun-style Hemi engine. They planned to run IHRA's Mountain Motor Pro Stock category that year, but a nasty crash totaled the car and nearly cost Ronnie his life. After recuperating, he confined his efforts mainly to the '68 Barracuda SS/A and to driving long-time friend Bob Reed's Sox & Martin clone '68 Barracuda. Showing that he still had it, Ronnie clocked high-8-second, 152-plus-mph times with the four-speed car, thrilling crowds whenever he ran and bringing the fans and even other competitors running to the fences to watch and listen as "Sox hit the gears." It was with the manual four-speed transmission that he gained his reputation as a virtual "can't miss."

Ronnie turned out for last October's East Coast Drag Times Hall of Fame weekend in Henderson, North Carolina. He reported that his treatments and battle against his cancer were going well, and he was optimistic as to the outcome. Sadly, Ronnie Sox passed from us forever on Saturday, April 22, 2006, but his legacy as a driver, racer, and likeable personality will endure forever.